I wrote:
Aha! Thanks [to Bryan] for this explanation of what I have been suffering from... I can't wait for the point releases. I'll go with HEAD on one of the branches for now.
Unfortunately, this patch did *not* fix what I have been suffering from. I'm still getting segfaults. I'll describe what I'm doing. Please let me know if either of the two problems below are actual problems, or if I'm just missing something. I'll submit them as issues if they are problems. Sample code: http://github.com/ygale/test-text-icu The following procedure worked fine for 32 bit Windows versions of GHC previous to 7.8.* and with all recent versions of cabal-install. Using Haskell Platform 2014.2.0.0 (GHC 7.8.3) 64 bit on Windows 7. Using rev. caf257cd96e766b293943bbac07d766ec2f552dd of cabal, the latest rev. at the moment, on the 1.20 branch. I locally changed the version numbers in the cabal files of both Cabal and cabal-install so I could verify that I really am using cabal.exe from that revision. I verified in the source code that the -fPIC fix is included. Clone the above sample code, and unzip ICU4C 54.1 (currently the latest) for 64 bit Windows in a nearby folder. ***Problem #1 (minor): Relative linker paths don't work anymore cabal sandbox init cabal install --extra-lib-dirs=..\relative\path\to\icu\lib64 --extra-include-dirs=..\relative\path\to\icu\include text-icu This fails with: Warning: 'extra-lib-dirs: ../relative/path/to/icu/lib64' directory does not exist. Warning: 'include-dirs: ../relative/path/to/icu/include' directory does not exist. cabal: Missing dependencies on foreign libraries: * Missing C libraries: icuuc, icuin, icudt Note: The same problem occurs if you copy the ICU folders into the source tree. That just gets rid of the warnings that sdist won't work. ***Problem #2 (major): segfault! cabal install --extra-lib-dirs=C:\absolute\path\to\icu\lib64 --extra-include-dirs=C:\absolute\path\to\icu\include text-icu cabal install Now, place .cabal-sandbox\bin\test-text-icu.exe together with the 3 DLLs icudt54.dll, icuin54.dll, and icuuc54.dll from icu\bin64 all together in the same folder. Run test-text-icu. Kaboom! Note: The same problem occurs if you place *all* of the DLLs from icu\bin64 in the folder together with the exe. So it's not a missing DLL. Thanks, Yitz